his way towards the re-establishment of the court party. His chief
helpers in this work were the two Despensers, father and son, both
named Hugh. The elder Despenser, then nearly sixty years of age, had
grown grey in the service of Edward I. A baron of competent estate, he
inherited from his father, the justiciar who fell at Evesham, an
hereditary bias towards the constitutional tradition, but he looked to
the monarch or to the popular estates, rather than to the baronage, as
the best embodiment of his ideals. Ambitious and not over-scrupulous,
he saw more advantage to himself in playing the game of the king than
in joining a swarm of quarrelsome opposition lords. From the beginning
of the reign he had identified himself with Gaveston and the courtiers,
and had incurred the special wrath of Lancaster and the ordainers.
Excluded from court, forced into hiding, excepted from several
pacifications as he had been, Despenser never long absented himself
from the court. His ambition was kindled by the circumstance that his
eldest son had become the most intimate personal friend of the king.
Brought up as a boy in the household of Edward when Prince of Wales,
the ties of old comradeship gradually drew the younger Hugh into
Gaveston's old position as the chief favourite. Neither a foreigner nor
an adventurer, Despenser had the good sense to avoid the worst errors
of his predecessor. As chamberlain, he was in constant attendance on
the king; and having married Edward's niece Eleanor, the eldest of the
Gloucester co-heiresses, he sought to establish himself among the
higher aristocracy. Royal grants and offices rained upon father and
son. The household officers were changed at their caprice. The only
safe way to the king's favour was by purchasing their good-will. Their
good fortune stirred up fierce animosities, and the barons showed that
they could hate a renegade as bitterly as a foreign adventurer.

The Despensers' ambition to attain high rank was the more natural from